I met Lan Lian once during my stint as the county chief’s mount. He was carrying two baskets of iron ore down a narrow mountain path while I was on my way up the mountain with the county chief on my back. When he saw me, he dropped his carrying pole, spilling the iron ore, which rolled down the mountain. The county chief was irate:
“What was that all about? Iron ore is too valuable to lose, even a single rock. Go down and bring that back up.”
I could tell that Lan Lian hadn’t hear a word the county chief said. His eyes flashed as he ran up, threw his arms around my neck, and said:
“Blackie, old Blackie, at last I found you…”
Recognizing that he was my former owner, Chen turned to Secretary Fan, who followed us everywhere on an emaciated horse, and signaled for him to come deal with the matter. Fan, always alert to what his boss wanted, jumped off his horse and pulled Lan Lian off to one side.
“What do you think you’re doing? This is the county chief’s donkey.”
“No, it isn’t, it’s mine, my Blackie. He lost his mother at birth and only survived because my wife fed him millet porridge from his first days. We relied upon him for our livelihood.”
“Even if what you say is true,” Secretary Fan said, “if the county chief hadn’t come along when he did, a group of militiamen would have made donkey meat out of him. He now has a very important job, taking the county chief into villages and saving the nation the expense of a Jeep. The county chief cannot do without him, and you should rejoice in knowing that your donkey is playing such an important role.”
“I don’t care about that,” Lan Lian replied stubbornly. “All I know is, he’s my donkey, and I’m taking him with me.”
“Lan Lian, old friend,” the county chief said. “These are extraordinary times, and this donkey has been an enormous help to me in negotiating these mountain paths. So let’s just say I’ve got your donkey on temporary loan, and as soon as the steel smelting project has ended, you can have him back. I’ll see that the government gives you a stipend for the duration of the loan period.”
Lan Lian wasn’t finished, but an official from the co-op walked up, dragged him back to the side of the road, and said sternly:
“Like a goddamn dog who doesn’t know how lucky he is to be carried in a sedan chair, you should be thanking your ancestors for accumulating good luck, which is why the county chief has chosen your donkey to ride.”
Raising his hand for the man to stop the harangue, the county chief said:
“How’s this, Lan Lian? You’re a man of strong character, for which I admire you. But I can’t help feeling sorry for you, and as chief official of this county, I hope you’ll soon be leading your donkey into the co-op and stop resisting the tides of history.”
The co-op official held Lan Lian to the side of the road so the county chief-so that I – could pass, and when I saw the look in Lan Lian’s eyes, I felt pangs of guilt and wondered to myself: Could this be considered an act of betrayal to my master on my way up to a higher limb? The county chief must have intuited my feelings, for he patted me on the head and said consolingly:
“Let’s go, Snow Stand. Carrying the county representative is making a greater contribution than tagging along behind Lan Lian. Sooner or later, he’ll join the People’s Commune, and when he does, you’ll become public property. Wouldn’t it be perfectly normal for the county chief to ride on a People’s Commune donkey?”
As you’ll see, this was a case of: Extreme joy begets sorrow; when things reach their extreme, they turn and head in the opposite direction. At dusk on the fifth day after the encounter with my former master, I was carrying the county chief home from a visit to the iron mine at Reclining Ox Mountain when a rabbit hopped across the path in front of me. Spooked, I reared up and caught my right front hoof between some rocks when I landed. I fell, and so did the county chief, who hit his head on a sharp rock, which knocked him out and opened a gash in his head. His secretary immediately told some men to carry the unconscious county chief down the mountain. Meanwhile, some farmers tried to free my hoof, but it was stuck tight and deep. Nothing worked. They pushed, they pulled, and then I heard a crack rise up from the rocks and felt a pain so severe I too passed out. When I came to, I discovered that my right front hoof and the bones that connected it to my leg were still stuck in the rocks, and that my blood had stained a large section of the roadway. I was overcome by grief. My usefulness as a donkey was over, that I knew. The county chief would have no further use for me. Even my master would have no interest in feeding a donkey that could no longer work. All I had to look forward to was the butcher’s knife. They’d slit my throat, and once I’d spilled all the blood in my body, they’d skin me and slice my flesh into morsels of tasty meat that would wind up in people’s stomachs… Better that I take my own life. I glanced over at the cliff and could see the misty village below. With one loud hee-haw – I rolled across the roadway toward the dropoff. What stopped me was a loud cry from Lan Lian.
He had run up the mountain. He was all sweaty, and his knees were spotted with blood. He’d obviously stumbled and fallen on his way up. In a voice distorted by flowing tears, he shouted:
“Blackie, my old Blackie…”
He wrapped his arms around my neck as some farmers lifted up my tail and moved my rear legs to help me stand up. Excruciating pain shot up my injured leg when it touched the ground and sweat gushed from my body. Like a dilapidated wall, I toppled to the ground a second time.
I heard one of the farmers say in what passed for sympathy:
“He’s a useless cripple, that’s the bad news. The good news is he’s got plenty of meat on his bones. We ought to be able to sell him for a decent sum to the butchers.”
“Shut the fuck up!” Lan Lian swore angrily. “Would you take your father to the butchers if he broke his leg?”
That stunned everyone within earshot. But the silence was quickly broken by the same farmer.
“Watch your mouth! This donkey, is he your father?” He rolled up his sleeves, itching for a fight, but was held back by the men around him.
“Let it go,” they said. “Just let it go. The last thing you want is to piss off this madman. He’s the only independent farmer in the whole county. They know all about him up at the county chief’s office.”
The crowd broke up, leaving just the two of us. A crescent moon hung in the sky; the sight and the situation made me sad beyond words. After venting against the county chief and that bunch of farmers, my master took off his jacket and tore it into strips to bind my injured leg. Hee-haw, hee-haw – That really hurt. He wrapped his arms around my head, his tears falling onto my ears. “Blackie, old Blackie, what can I say to make this better? How could you believe anything the officials said? At the first sign of trouble, all they care about is saving their precious official. They don’t give a damn about you. If they’d sent for a stonemason to break up the rocks that pinned your hoof, it might have been saved.” The words were no sooner out of his mouth than he let go of my head and ran over to the rocky spot in the road, where he reached down and tried to retrieve my separated hoof. He cried, he swore, he panted from sheer exhaustion, and he eventually managed to retrieve it. Standing there holding it in his hand, he wailed, and when I saw the iron shoe, worn shiny after all that time, I broke down and cried too.